Competition 2010 (now official)

[Chris]

Enough of waiting, JGadrow and I will organize an unofficial competition. Everyone welcome to join!

Rules:
- competition lasts 1 month (2010.01.18 - 2010.02.18)
- you are allowed to join in the middle (althrough you will be in disadvantage due to shorter time available)
- you start with a new game (exceptions below)
- you can use all source codes you ever made (and you are encouraged to do so)
- you are allowed to start with a game you used in the last competition 2008 if you scored lower than 5-th position and if you feel it is still very unfinished
- judges can allow (on case by case basis) to start with some ancient game you never finished and never put online
- all other rules & details on judging procedures are to be decided by JGadrow (he is not particiating and proved to be unbiased in the past)

Contact:
- selection of judges, judging and rules interpretation - JGadrow
- all other organisational issues/questions - Chris

If you want to participate/offer rewards to winners post below.

[JGadrow]

If you're interested in judging, you will not be allowed to enter the competition. Please send me a message if you're willing to judge for this. I will be one of those judging and, as last time, if someone desires a full review, I will provide such to you. If you decide to judge, it's up to you whether you declare yourself publicly or not. I'll assume anonymity is your preference unless otherwise indicated.

If you wish to compete, reply to this post stating that you will be competing. At some stage, you will need to provide a URL for judges to use.

Notice, there are no mention of prizes. This is a "for fun" competition. If someone wants to step forward and provide a prize, I'm sure the winner(s) would appreciate it but it's not necessary.

*edit to include entry rules.

[Mufasa]

i plan on gutting and overhauling a game I bought that was based on an open-source script (got it mainly for the player base and revenue the owner CLAIMED it was making). The general IDEA of the game should remain, but everything will be done from scratch. Is this something that would be eligible or no?

[bbgames]

What about games that are in progress? I've had a game I've been working on since late december and is starting to get to the beta stages, but hasn't been released yet - would that be a candidate, or not?

[nano]

Awesome! I am in.

[Chris]

I'm participating. Probably it will be a strategy in post nuclear setting (I bought the domain a few years ago and could never decided what to put there ). Anyway, this time I will have to decide and I have only time till Monday to make up my mind, which I like a lot

[JGadrow]

i plan on gutting and overhauling a game I bought that was based on an open-source script (got it mainly for the player base and revenue the owner CLAIMED it was making). The general IDEA of the game should remain, but everything will be done from scratch. Is this something that would be eligible or no?

Yup, sounds like a candidate to me.

What about games that are in progress? I've had a game I've been working on since late december and is starting to get to the beta stages, but hasn't been released yet - would that be a candidate, or not?

Seeing as how this is neither 'ancient' (seeing that it's in active development) and wasn't entered in the last competition, this doesn't seem to fit the criteria. Sorry.

[Mufasa]

great, I'll be entering then. So monday is my target start date. let's see what I can do in 4 weeks

[Xavier]

I'm out. There's no way I can make anything within such a short period of time.
My work takes most of my time and the rest I put into polishing DuelCamp.

Good luck everyone and have fun!

[Harkins]

Ha, I was planning on starting mine on Monday anyways. Now I've got a deadline.

On the other hand, now I really really have to come up with a damn name.

[Mufasa]

I guess I should ask about judging. How polished does the game need to be? How feature-rich? Just something basic? What will be the criteria? Design, Fun?

[raestlyn]

I was waiting for this I'm in!

[Harkins]

I have some very under-used hosting I could chip in as a prize. It's shared hosting at Dreamhost so it's not blazing fast, but it'd work for a basic game or asset (img, css, js, swf, video) hosting (can't be used for personal backup, they watch for it and bitch).

Winner could have an FTP account to their own domain/subdomain for six months. Store up to 300G, use 1TB/month in bandwidth.

[JGadrow]

@Harkins
Drat! I was hoping to recruit you as a judge. lol

To answer criteria about judging, it will be based upon multiple criteria. Here's my outline:

"Fun" factor: 50%
Originality: 25%
Interface: 15%
Visual: 10%

By 'interface' I mean how intuitive the game is to play. If I need convoluted directions or have to take guesses on how to play it and still end up getting stuck, you'll get a low score here even if it's bright and pretty.

Each aspect will be given a rating (1-5) with higher ratings being desirable. Each aspect will be multiplied by its percentage and added together to achieve a total score.

So, if a game was rated:
Fun: 3
Originality: 5
Interface: 3
Visual: 1

Each rating would be determined as:
Fun -> 150
Originality -> 125
Interface -> 45
Visual -> 10
Total rating = 330

A 'perfect' game would have the following:
Fun: 5 -> 250
Originality: 5 -> 125
Interface: 5 -> 75
Visual: 5 -> 50
Total rating = 500

*edit - and, yes, I did just come up with this "off the cuff" so if someone has a suggestion to add, let me know.

[Chris]

I have some very under-used hosting I could chip in as a prize. It's shared hosting at Dreamhost so it's not blazing fast, but it'd work for a basic game or asset (img, css, js, swf, video) hosting (can't be used for personal backup, they watch for it and bitch).

Winner could have an FTP account to their own domain/subdomain for six months. Store up to 300G, use 1TB/month in bandwidth.

We got one prize then.

Does anyone have some spare hosting capacity right now (prefered PHP5, 1 MySQL database (MyISAM+InnoDB), cronjobs)? From past experience I think there will be a few competitors that would have problem with hosting (some even dropped out last time since they were unable to make it online). If somone could utilize temporary hosting for part of competitors (for the duration of competition only) by next week (or  later) please post, we could use it as emergency solution for some people.

Tips for newbies:
- Put your game framework online as soon as possible. Make your FTP working, make database connection. Just very basics, not even a game, register and login system would be enough. The last thing you want to find out that your game won't work on live environment because of different PHP version or something. Also this will give you a big morale boost once you see something on your own online.
- Concentrate on the core gameplay, you won't have time to implement everything you want in one month. Polishing can be done later. You just want to make it playable and reasonably bug free by the time judges come to check your game.
- Make a goal to put the game online in week 2 (or even at the end of week 1) and make it playable in week 3. Do not plan for full month, you need to leave some room for unexpected (read: bugs). If you find that everything works by the week 3 and is playable then you still will have a long list of secondary features to implement, so don't worry about aiming for faster deployment

[Harkins]

Well, you know, I have some spare hosting until I need to award the prize, heh.

If anyone needs hosting for the contest, the Dreamhost features will fit your needs and you have enough of a history here that I don't have to worry you'll Do Evil Things, I'd be happy to host you. Send a PM.

[thesnarky1]

* thesnarky1 joins

Qorporate Quest (http://www.qorporatequest.com)

[e-fish]

I had planned to start a non-game web project next week. It has a few things I can use for a game though, so if I can borrow enough code from that Ill throw something together. I have been planning to do a game for ages but never really gotten it off ground so I guess im in the newbie camp above.

ps: welcome thesnarky1

pps: if i dont have time ill help judge if i am welcome

[dbest]

Would have loved to join the competition, however I am working on getting my tennis management game to a beta stage and looks like I cannot enter that game into the competition.

[Nox]

Similarly here, I'd use the time for increasing the chance I'll finish my game in my lifetime maybe in some next one

[Mufasa]

With the number of folks dropping out due to it, perhaps allowing beta games in should be allowed?

[Mike]

With the number of folks dropping out due to it, perhaps allowing beta games in should be allowed?

The problem then is that the competition completely changes.. it's no longer what can be made from scratch in 4 weeks but games that could have been on the development line for some years.

One funny example for me would be http://bootleggers.us/ - they had "BETA" in their title for about 4 years, despite the website looking pretty finished off, 10s of thousands of players and little changes being made - could that be entered?

I'm just thinking it could become a little unfair but then again it's hard to judge.. someone could have been developing something on their PC locally for a year or so then bring it into the competition claiming they've just started developing it.

Perhaps I'm looking into this with too much detail? The competition is for fun right?

[Mufasa]

might be worth it then to judge on a case by case basis. Check the site out, if it's too far along, it can't be entered

[Nox]

Sorry...don't get discouraged yet

[gnoh]

If alpha/beta's are allowed i'd like to enter mine

I havn't got time to start another one at the moment.